Enter your email:

Many merchants pay us a small referral fee when you click our links and purchase from them. On Amazon it works on everything from grills to diapers, they never tell us what you bought, and it has zero impact on the price you pay, but has a major impact on our ability to improve this site! And remember, we only recommend products we love. If you like AmazingRibs.com, please save this link and use it every time you go to Amazon https://tinyurl.com/amazingribs

GOLD MEDAL SPOTLIGHT

Gold Medal Gift Guide

Gold Medal Gift Guide

Surely you know somebody who loves outdoor cooking who deserves a gift for the holidays, birthday, anniversary, or just for being wonderful. There he is, right in the mirror! Here are our selections of best ideas, all Pitmaster Award winners or Gold Medalist, listed by price.

Masterbuilt MPS 340/G ThermoTemp XL Propane Smoker

The First Propane Smoker With A Thermostat Makes This Baby Foolproof

Set ThermoTemp's dial from 175° to 350°F and the thermostat inside will adjust the burner just like an indoor kitchen oven. All you need to do is add wood to the tray above the burner to start smokin'.

If you have a Weber Kettle, you need the Slow 'N' Sear

The Good-One Is A Superb Grill And A Superb Smoker All In One

The Good-One Open Range is a charcoal grill with an offset smoke chamber attached. It is dramatically different from a traditional offset smoker. The grill sits low in front and doubles as a firebox for the smoke chamber which is spliced on above and behind so it can work like a horizontal offset smoker only better. By placing the heat source behind and under the smokebox instead of off to the side, Open Range produces even temperature from left to right, something almost impossible to achieve with a standard barrel shaped offset.

G&F Suede Welder's Gloves

Heat Resistant Gloves With Extra Long Sleeves Hold The Hot Stuff

If you're using oven mitts at the grill, it's time to trade up. Say hello to these suede welder's gloves. They're heat resistant enough to handle hot grill grates, and flexible enough to handle tongs. The extra long sleeves even let you reach deep into the firebox to move hot logs without getting burned. Our Fave.

Is This Superb Charcoal Grill A Kamado Killer?

The PK-360, with 360 square inches of cooking space, this rust free, cast aluminum charcoal grill is durable and easy to use. Four-way venting means it's easy to set up for two zone cooking with more control than single vent Kamado grills. It is much easier to set up for 2-zone cooking than any round kamado. Beautifully designed and completely portable. Meathead says it is his preferrred grill.

GrillGrates Take Gas Grills To The Infrared Zone

GrillGrates(TM) amplify heat, prevent flareups, make flipping foods easier, keep small foods from committing suicide, kill hotspots, are easier to clean, flip over to make a fine griddle, and can be easily removed and moved from one grill to another. You can even throw wood chips, pellets, or sawdust between the rails and deliver a quick burst of smoke to whatever is above. Every gas grill needs them.

The Pit Barrel Cooker May Be Too Easy

The PBC has a rabid cult following for good reason. It is absolutely positively without a doubt the best bargain on a smoker in the world. Period. This baby will cook circles around the cheap offset sideways barrel smokers in the hardware stores because temperature control is so much easier. Best of all, it is only $299 delivered to your door!

Our Favorite Backyard Smoker

The amazing Karubecue is the most innovative smoker in the world. The quality of meat from this machine is astonishing. At its crux is a patented firebox that burns logs above the cooking chamber and sucks heat and extremely clean blue smoke into the thermostat controlled oven. It is our favorite smoker, period.

Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker Smoker 18" Review

The Weber Smokey Mountain Cooker 18" is the original and mid-size version of their popular charcoal smoker. WSMs are high quality, charcoal fueled, bullet-shaped smokers. They are often seen competing head to head with large commercial cookers at practically every BBQ competition. And winning. They take very little time to master, and there are a lot of tricks the experts use to produce incredible food.

Smokey Mountains cook at a remarkably steady temp for hours and raising or lowering temp on this small model is fairly easy by opening and closing the vents.

Construction is solid and finish is beautiful. Weber really knows how to make long lasting porcelain and chrome coatings. The legs are sturdy and there is a bowl-shaped aluminum heat shield attached to them. If you cook on a wood deck, we recommend setting your WSM on a grill mat.

It has an inaccurate bi-metal thermometer built into the lid, but in 2014 they added a soft grommet on the right side for easy insertion of your digital thermometer. There is a side door for adding coal, wood, and water, although adding water and lit coals through the door is tricky. The door leaks smoke and lets in oxygen, making it hard to shut down the supply of oxygen and kill the coals. We bent ours slightly to make it fit better, but wondered how Weber could craft the door so poorly after crafting the other parts so well.

We also wish WSM had a wider lid. It rests inside a lip in the center section allowing rain and melting snow to get in. We would prefer that the lid overlap the center section, just like the lid on the Weber Kettle.

If you are trying to decide between the Smokey Mountain 18" and the 22", keep in mind that a full slab of ribs will not fit onto the cooking grates of the smaller unit without some trickery, and if the meat gets too close to the sides the heat rising around the water pan can scorch it. On the other hand, it is hard to get temp down below 275F on the 22.5 incher.

Cooked On It

We have hands-on experience testing this product. We have also gathered info from the manufacturer, owners and other reliable sources.

Weber-Stephen

Weber-Stephen is one of the oldest and most respected manufacturers of BBQ equipment and related accessories in the world. Weber grills and smokers cook beautifully and have great features that are clever, effective and easy to use. As popularity and demand for BBQ gear grows worldwide, Weber continues to earn their long standing reputation for quality, durability and outstanding customer service and support, (7 days a week from 7am to 9pm CST), in an increasingly competitive environment. Even in this crowded marketplace, many consumers are still willing to pay more for the Weber name and they are rarely disappointed. They make a variety of cookers and smokers. Their iconic black charcoal kettles are known throughout the world. Indeed Weber is expanding globally.

Weber-Stephen was family owned since it was founded in 1952 by George Stephen. At the end of 2010 the Stephen family sold a majority stake to Chicago investment group BDT Capital Partners. In 2012, Weber settled a class action suit out of court regarding their use of the phrase, "Made in USA". Weber previously qualified the "Made in USA" statement by specifying their products are assembled in the USA with some components that are sourced globally. Here is an excerpt from Weber's statement "Weber believes that because all Weber grills and the disputed accessories are designed and engineered in the USA, and all grills save for one line [Spirit]* are manufactured and assembled in the USA using component parts primarily made in the USA, it did nothing wrong and therefore has valid defenses to plaintiff's claims. The court has not held a trial or ruled in favor of either party on any disputed issues. Weber and the plaintiff have agreed to settle the matter to avoid the costs of continued litigation." As a result of this suit, Weber can no longer claim to be made in America.

Things change, but we believe Weber's commitment to quality and innovation has not.

The biggest barrier for many folks is price. Webers are not cheap, but when you consider that they last decades, the price is easy to justify. Many some cheap grills fall apart after three years or so.

Our main complaint: All Webers have the obligatory bi-metal dial thermometer in the hood that gives you a ballpark reading of what the temperature is high above the meat. Since we cook on the grates, though, it's always better to bring your own digital thermometer and place a probe there. It would be nice if they would go digital in the digital age and it appears with their acquisition of iGrill digital thermometers, this is begining to change.

*At the very end of 2016 Weber introduced their new line of Genesis II gas grills to replace the popular Genesis series. Genesis II is made in China. Genesis II LX is still made in Palatine, IL.

Weber Charcoal Grills

In 2015 Weber changed the names of several popular charcoal grills and added a few new features. Don't worry though, they are still the iconic kettles you grew up with. These classic grills have played a big part in BBQ history and helped spread the joy of outdoor cooking across America and beyond. The 22.5" kettle is by far the most popular backyard grill in the world for under a hundred dollars. The body and lid are pressed from solid sheets of steel so there are no welds to rust, and coated with a durable powder coated baked on porcelain enamel that lasts for decades. The lower intake vents double as an ash collection system and the three legs with two wheels make rolling it around a snap. It is lightweight, there are few parts, and simplicity reigns. The lids fit tightly so oxygen control, and therefore heat control, is very good. And, with the exception of the Ranch Kettle, they are inexpensive.

AmazingRibs.com science advisor, Dr. Greg Blonder, observes, "Most people believe the Weber is a parabolic reflector, focusing heat emitted by the coals directly on the grill. A parabolic reflector is only effective when the heat source is tiny, intense and located at the focal point. This is not true in the case of the Weber, where the heat source is a sheet of coals spread over a large area. On the other hand, the Weber gets many things right. While the parabola won't create a beam of infra-red energy, the high almost vertical side walls reflect the infra-red image of the coals from side to side- like images of your head pinging back and forth between two mirrors at the barbershop. So this 'reflection gallery effect' does increase the heat intensity a bit compared to cooking over an open pit, where heat emitted to the sides is lost. The system is efficient, burning a minimum number of briquets during cooking." Probably no other single invention has influenced the American diet more since the invention of the electric refrigerator.

Weber Charcoal Grills are offered in four basic configurations: the small, portable Smokey Joe Series, the larger One-Touch kettles on three legs, the Performer Series mounted on carts and the oversize Ranch Kettle. They also offer three models of the popular Weber Smokey Mountain smokers. In 2016 they introduced Weber Summit Charcoal Grills, multifunction cookers that are effective smokers and grills under one hood.

Other stuff

Many merchants pay us a small referral fee when you click our links and purchase from them. On Amazon it works on everything from grills to diapers, they never tell us what you bought, and it has zero impact on the price you pay, but has a major impact on our ability to improve this site! And remember, we only recommend products we love. If you like AmazingRibs.com, please save this link and use it every time you go to Amazonhttps://tinyurl.com/amazingribs

Post comments and questions below

3) Tell us everything we need to know to help such as the type of cooker and thermometer. Dial thermometers are often off by as much as 50°F so if you are not using a good digital thermometer we probably can't help you with time and temp questions. Please read this article about thermometers.

4) If you are a member of the Pitmaster Club, your comments login is probably different.

Our Privacy Promise, Terms of Service, Code of Ethics. AmazingRibs.com promises to never sell or distribute any info about you individually without your express permission, and we promise not to, ahem, pepper you with email or make you eat spam. We are GDPR compliant (the stringent General Data Protection Regulations from the European Union that went into effect in 2018). GDPR requires that we be willing to delete any info we have about an EU resident if you request it. We go a step further. We extend this right to anyone, EU resident or not. For more about our privacy promise, code of ethics, terms of service, and how we operate to insure you unbiased info, click here.

Contact Us. If you have questions related to barbecue or grilling, please post them to the comments section at the bottom of any page. Our talented team of paid moderators will be with you shortly. If you have business or tecnical issues, please contact us with this email form.